14 DAY TRIAL // OK, so we all know that Christmas will come with lots of infections and computer threats aiming to harm your system. Today's lesson is another Christmas ecard, coming by email and attempting to get the users on a fake Yahoo Greeting website. Obviously, the website is hosted on another domain, but it uses the Sunnyvale portal's interface to trick users that they are visiting a legitimate website.
Just like the past exploits, the malicious website informs the users that a newer version of Adobe Flash Player is required in order to view the ecard. Clicking on the provided link starts the download of 'macromedia-flashplayerupdate.exe," an agent that "collects various types of information from the infected machine and sends it back to the malware author via a website," as the F-Secure team wrote on the official blog of the company.
"Marianna has sent you an ecard. To view your ecard, click on the following link. Thank you! Your friends at Yahoo! Greetings," the email message reads. "Hello, you either have JavaScript turned off or an old version of Adobe's Flash Player. Get the latest Flash player," it is mentioned on the infected website. "Hope your Christmas is as wonderful as you are!" it adds.
The last few days came with numerous other Christmas threats, all of them attempting to infect users' computers and access their data. Usually, the attacks are attempting to reach their goal by attaching viruses, Trojan horses or other type of malware and install them on the readers' systems.
Usually, it's enough to ignore the unsolicited emails coming from untrusted sources and avoid downloading suspect attachments. In addition, keep your antivirus solution up-to-date, with the latest virus definitions, and apply the latest patches in order to block any potential vulnerability exploits. See? Easy as taking candies from a baby...